By far the most intricate quartz watch from Switzerland that I am aware of is the Tissot T-Touch:

Tissot T-Tactile T-Touch Screen Men’s Watch Stainless Steel Black Dial T33158851

…and that’s just a gimmicky gadget more for computer nerds rather than those serious about quality watches.

The further you go up in the price spectrum, the worse it becomes I’m afraid.

Take for example the Breitling Aerospace Advantage (which is Swiss for all you watch idiots out there):

Breitling Aerospace Avantage Digital Mens Watch E7936210/M513

This watch is pretty expensive, but on the plus side it is a quartz watch that can track a second time zone, has a countdown timer, has an alarm, and also has a a chronograph.

That’s all good stuff, but wait!!!

This Citizen watch (which is of course Japanese), has got pretty much all that same stuff too:

Citizen Jy0010-50e Eco Drive Mens Watch

On top of that it can track the time in 43 world cities, is solar powered, syncs up with an atomic clock for infinitely precise time, and it’s got a perpetual calendar to boot.  Zounds!

Did I also mention that this, even factoring in any discounts likely to be had with the Breitling, costs $2,000 less as well?

Well if you’ve ever compared Japanese cars against European cars, I’m sure this won’t come as any surprise, but this is yet another arena in which the Japanese have got the Europeans finger licked.

The Japanese quartz watches being offered by companies like Citizen, Seiko, and Casio, offer much better value than anything the Swiss could hope for, and besides that, whereas the Swiss still struggle with basic multifunction quartz watches, the Japanese offer quartz watches that operate with solar power (or kinetic power), sync up with atomic clocks, and offer complex functions such as a perpetual calendar and minute repeater.

In other words, they are light years ahead, and when it comes to mechanical movements they have not only made mechanical watches with better value, but they have meshed old mechanical watch technology with all the benefits of quartz-watch accuracy as well.

Sure there are many good Swiss quartz movements out there in the entry-level watches you’d find out of Tag Heuer, Omega, and Rolex (made by ETA no less), but besides keeping just the basic functionality of time and date, and maybe  a chronograph, they don’t do squat.

And for me, it is seriously difficult to find a single Swiss, quartz-powered watch that goes beyond the same boring functionality that I had in my digital watches 20 years ago.

Quite frankly, when it comes to the quartz watch, I can’t entirely blame them.  I mean the Japanese did invent the quartz watch so they must be better with the stuff, and with so many people eating up the old school mechanical incarnations of the Swiss, why even bother?

I say let the Japanese do what they do best, and let the Swiss do what they do best!

Outside of any digital watch you may know of, what watch do you know of that has ALL of the following features:

- Compass
- Chronograph
- Thermometer
- Altimeter
- Barometer
- Alarm
- Time (obviously)

The T-Touch may be old news now that it has been out for a few years, but the number of watches that have come out that can match the T-Touch in its superior multi-functionality can barely be measured in single digits.

To sum it up, there is not a single watch quite like the Tissot T-Touch.

Tissot T-Touch Titanium – T33.7.888.92 Gents Watch

And would you just look at it! The T-Touch isn’t like your ugly Casio G-Shock, it’s a work of beauty with a pretty bracelet and a very clean and attractive design. It’s not too big, not to small, it’s dial is not too busy, yet not too simple either; it is just right. It comes in a variety of colors and straps, but in the opinion of your humble presenter, the titanium with the black carbon fiber dial as pictured above is the most attractive.

So then, how does it operate?

Well it’s not called the T “Touch” for nothing…

In this watch you will find technology that is more akin to a car’s GPS device rather than a watch. If you want to know the temperature or use the altimeter all you have to do is touch a part of the watch crystal and it will instantly tell you information you want to know. Get lost in the woods? Just touch the crystal in the 6 o’clock position above where it says “compass” and the hour and minute hands will instantly move to create an arrow pointing toward the magnetic north pole.

The T-Touch uses a touch-sensitive crystal so that in the instance that you ever got lost somewhere with bleeding hands and are otherwise incapable of operating complicated crowns and buttons, all you would have to do is use your bloodied hands to touch a part of the crystal so that you can at least know the time, altitude, temperature, and barometric pressure conditions in which you have perished.

Well that sounds all good on paper, and after personally handling the T-Touch I have to say that it is an interesting little novelty, but would you ever buy one?

Well the answer for me is a very simple NO!

For starters, the novelty of the watch is exactly that, a novelty! These things are notoriously unreliable and while a great number of T-Touch watches are made of titanium they are not able to withstand the knocks that their muscular facade leads their owners to believe. On top of that, if you get these watches in water any deeper than the kiddie pool, your watch is history.

The fact that the functions of the watch require the constant movement of the hours and minutes hands leads it to be quite thirsty in the battery department as well. So while it may be good to wear this thing to a weekend barbecue to impress your friend, trusting that its functions will work when you need it the most is a bit of a leap of faith.